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“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”~Anais Nin

And then the day came where the pain of staying the same was greater than the pain it would take to open. February-long winter contraction of white walls and city apartment silence making it impossible for my lungs to fully expand. Seeking to break the spell, venturing out into a sleepy urban neighborhood along a sidewalk of tired red bricks still holding spots of frozen ice. Back inside to what felt less like the confines of culture, grateful for having somewhere to go.

And as I knelt on the mat in the semi-tamed woods of a group of penitent women, after strengthening biceps and drawing in on obliques, stretching out the contraction of my hamstrings, and re-lengthening the contour of my hip line, my eyes traveled up and caught sight of my reflection, noticed I was a brunette wearing a bandana in a sea of blondes, a ladybird in a flock of geese that seemed to fly together, a white birch in a forest of cypress and elm.

Yet they seemed to welcome in my being there, just the same.

Later, I stood in front of water drips on the bamboo printed wall, soles of my feet soft against the porcelain smooth wet wood. I held my shoulders close in both palms as water fell from the rain-bath overhead, looked up and saw my reflection in the silver plated fixture and breathed in value, worthiness and lovability that seemed to be hovering around. And I thought about how in those moments, the things that sometimes make us feel like so much less than all of those whole self connected things, felt to be so foreign.

That otherness can exist as what defines & connects, rather than outlies us.

How even in the moments where the ones we love don’t reach back out and grab onto the hand we’re holding out to them,

words like a white light offering saying “come with me, we really can be this beautiful,” that even if it feels to be that they can’t always see us,

it doesn’t mean we aren’t real.